The spread of fake news remains a constant problem for WhatsApp and the Facebook-owned company continues to take steps in order to clamp down on it. A new report reveals that the company is developing a new feature which will enable users to identify whether an image that they have received is legitimate or not.
A “search by image” tool has been discovered by the folks at WABetaInfo in update 2.19.73 of WhatsApp. This feature will allow users to upload a received image directly to Google so that they can find “similar or equal” images on the internet. You can already do a reverse image search on Google so this tool is essentially tapping into that from within WhatsApp.
That additional context will hopefully enable users to ascertain the legitimacy of the images that they receive on WhatsApp. This feature hasn’t been enabled in the app as yet and the company hasn’t said when it plans on doing so.
Since it has been developed, it may be officially rolled out to WhatsApp users in the coming weeks. An easy and quick reverse image search feature in WhatsApp will certainly come in handy to prevent the spread of misinformation on the world’s biggest cross-platform messaging app.